Here we are at the final instalment of my cycle tour across the USA. Though closing in on the Pacific coast, California is certainly no pushover of a state, testing me to my limits with extreme weather and terrain.
Day 156 – Friday 14th October
Less than two miles outside Pahrump, Nevada, I spring a puncture. Air hisses loudly from an unseen hole, and I pull over on the side of the empty road. This is not good news. I made an early start that morning to reach Death Valley before the afternoon heat could fry me like the eggs people cook on the ground there.
When I get the tyre off, I find the interior filled with a milky white liquid. Back in Utah, I put liquid sealant in my tubes to guard against the thorny goat head plants that plague bikers in this western desert. Evidently, this hole is too big for sealing. Two hours flicker by in a mess of tube changing and attempts to find a gas station with a decent air hose. By the time I crest the pass leading into Death Valley, it is gone 1pm.
I already feel dizzy with the heat, but I try to reassure myself with the knowledge it is all downhill from here. At first, the strong winds of my descent seem to offer some small cooling effect, but then the air temperature surpasses that of blood. A furnace door is open and billowing its infernal heat over me in wave after wave. I try to approximate how far I have come using the elapsed time, but it is difficult to think coherently. At last, I round a bend to see the palm trees and brick terraces of the Furnace Creek resort, and I know that I will live to fight another day.
Day 163 – Friday 21st October
By US standards, the road I am following into the Sierra foothills is narrow. There isn’t the familiar, comforting shoulder to tuck into away from the traffic. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem that many people pass this way. There is a suggestion of autumn on the crisp breeze. Soon, the snow gates that stand sentinel over these mountain roads will swing shut for the winter.
After a lunch of two-day old ciabatta rolls with lemon and garlic hummus, I walk the Trail of 100 Giants. Cresting a small rise, the undergrowth thins, and I am confronted by my first giant. It is an absolute behemoth, not so much a tree as a landmark, reducing the rest of the forest to a glade of matchsticks. It is the sort of tree men would have come to worship at when the world was young, and dryads still danced barefoot in the leaf litter.
These trees can live for over three thousand years. They were saplings before the Golden Age of Ancient Greece, before the founding of Rome. Their leaves were sprouting as Solomon laid the foundations of the First Temple in Jerusalem, and pharaohs still sat the Egyptian throne. I read how early settlers cut down some of the sequoias to build houses. One accepts their desperation, but somehow it still feels a little like bulldozing the pyramids to make way for Milton Keynes.
Day 169 – Thursday 27th October
My breath fogs before my face, as I use chilly fingers to unlatch the steel container and pull out a loaf of cinnamon bread. I am forbidden from bringing food into my heated tent cabin due to bear activity. The honey I bought from the gift shop has gone rock solid overnight and refuses to be poured. Still though, I’m not complaining. I’m about to rock climb in Yosemite.
An hour later, I am kitted up in harness and helmet, standing at the base of a huge slab of granite. The first pitch looks low-angled and quite benign, but there are sections where the holds seem to run out and I have to smear (pushing the ball of my foot directly against the rock to create friction). Above a ledge, the second pitch demands a finger lock technique to make progress. My guide shows me how to insert three fingers into a tight seam with the thumb facing down, and then twist towards the palm to generate pressure.
A third pitch gives opportunities for laybacking and face climbing, techniques that I am more familiar with. I lose myself in the rhythm of the ascent, feet moving precisely to protruding features, hands providing relaxed, yet firm, points of balance. A bird screeches behind me, and I turn to see smooth white rock falling away to thickets of pine on the valley floor. A few miles to my west, climbers are inching ant-like up the sheer face of El Capitan, after a chilly night anchored to the most famous wall in the world.
Day 175 – Wednesday 2nd November
Pushing my way through a tangle of marijuana plants, I fumble in the darkness for a switch to open the garage door. Or at least to turn on a light. My host drank himself into a stupor last night and I think it would be churlish to wake him. I do though need to get my bike out of the garage without delay. There is a blizzard coming.
Eventually, I manage to press the right combination of buttons and the rusty hinges rattle into life. Trussed up with four layers of clothing on my torso, I ride out into the pattering rain. It’s not easy to use Google Maps with cold hands inside sodden gloves and droplets falling on the screen. As I climb higher, the rain turns to sleet and then fat flakes of snow.
I’m ok when I’m climbing, as the exertion generates body heat and my slow pace reduces the wind chill. Going down is a different story, and my hands are soon in absolute agony. It feels as though I am visiting an acupuncturist trained by the Spanish Inquisition. I discover that I can cut out the wind by putting my arms behind my back. Fortunately, six thousand miles of riding has done wonders for my sense of balance.
Day 177 – Friday 4th November
It is a morning like any other. I put on my bib shorts and jersey, pack my panniers and tip three sachets of electrolyte powder into my water bottle. But it is not just any morning. Today, I ride for the coast.
After all the mesmerising scenery I’ve encountered on my five-month journey, the final day is somewhat anti-climactic. As I approach San Francisco from the north, the urban sprawl rises up to engulf me with grey concrete and the dispiriting collection of chain stores that proclaim my arrival in Anywhere, USA. Still, though, I’m always up for a Five Guys cheeseburger with Cajun fries.
I always pictured that my last day would be sunny, but, as I enter the salt marshes beside Sausalito, a bank of fog comes toppling in over the hills. I climb steeply, round a corner, and there they are: the unmistakable red towers of the Golden Gate Bridge, their pinnacles lost in the clouds. Riding over the bridge, I look down at the foam-crested waves, and I realise that a dream so long in the making is realised. For these are not the glittering waters of the Atlantic playing to the ears of Lady Liberty on a bright spring morning; these are the powerful currents of the Pacific under a slate-grey autumn sky. It is a different ocean to the one I left. And I am a different man.